Wolfpack? Markets have been behaving more like a truckload of stolen puppies

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business

‘Why do we care what the markets think?’ asked the comedian Jeremy Hardy on Radio 4’s News Quiz last Friday. Whingeing leftie though he may be, Hardy had a point. ‘The markets’ were identified by spokesmen of all three political parties as the invisible presence at their secret post-election negotiating tables. A solution would have to be found ‘before markets open on Monday’ — and when it wasn’t, markets would still have to be reassured ‘very soon’. The real truth was that markets weren’t terribly interested in who was winning Nick Clegg’s favours during the four-day dance-athon before Tuesday’s denouement, because they were too busy watching the stitching-up in Brussels of a plan to prevent the whole southern eurozone following Greece into the abyss. Swedish finance minister Anders Borg set the tone by warning of the markets’ propensity to behave like a ‘wolfpack’ which could ‘tear the weaker countries apart’.